The invention relates to a heddle, in particular for power looms.
Power loom heddles are known per se. As a rule, they have an elongated body, shaped from a metal sheet, with so-called end eyelets embodied on their upper and lower ends; these eyelets serve to secure them to the support rail of a heddle shaft. The heddle is provided approximately in the middle with a yarn eyelet, which serves to guide a warp thread. By suitable longitudinal motion of all the heddles, shedding is accomplished in the loom.
Similar heddles are in use for jacquard machines. However, they are retained individually on harness yarns or so-called laces and are tensed by a spring.
Power looms with heddles retained on a shaft are today running up against higher and higher operating speeds. This means increasingly longer shedding strokes and/or shortened motion times, and as a result the loads on all the shedding devices, which include the heddles, increase considerably and in fact disproportionately. Besides the heddles and the shafts, the shedding devices also include all the drive elements that move the shaft. Efforts to reduce the mass of the shedding devices have so far focused essentially on the heddle shafts.
With this as the point of departure, it is the object of the invention to propose provisions with which the operating speed of a power loom can be increased.